


Time

by potionsmaster



Series: The In-Betweens [14]
Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Memories, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18938320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionsmaster/pseuds/potionsmaster
Summary: Kaidan takes a moment to think about the good times and the hard times, but mostly just time itself. Game 3, drawing closer to the end





	Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaxRev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxRev/gifts).



> I’m in a really dark place right now and haven’t been able to make words work for me for a few months now. I’m sorry. This takes place in the Wish You Were Here universe, which if you’re familiar with it, you know has its moments. This...is probably not what anybody was expecting for a gift ficlet, but Kaidan has been wanting to get this out for a little bit now and it’s...somewhat cathartic. 
> 
> To be read with [this song playing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A)

**_Time,_ ** by potionsmaster

 

Rating: T for language

 

For MaxRev.  Happy birthday, love.  Depending on how you look at it, it's either very early or very belated.  Sorry for the wait no matter what

 

~*~*~*~  

 

**time**

tīm/

_noun_

  1. the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.



 

A simple concept.   Or one that had the appearance of it, anyway.  Kaidan sighed lightly, leaning his arm against the plexi between him and the open expanse of the stars, brow furrowed in contemplation. The SR-2 was a strange place to be, particularly at this time.   _Time_.  Its simplicity was a farce.  So much more than the idea of a straight line in an endless march, forward moving, never faltering, ever onward.

 

_Time._

 

It was infinite.  Or it was if you lived forever, Kaidan supposed as he chewed his bottom lip.  It wasn’t for humans. Or turians. Or quarians... Definitely not for salarians, with their 40 year life-span.  Asari and krogan could pretend it was infinite if they really wanted to, but he himself was glad he was human; he didn’t think he had the stamina to live as long as they did.  And even if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d want to, anyway. He’d already lost enough people to the war. Most of his family. Jenkins. Ash. Lilith. Shepard… though he supposed that last one didn’t count, since Shepard had come back, but that wasn’t something he could ever have known or counted on.  He didn’t want to face a lonely existence of watching those he cared for fall victim to the patient predator that was time. No, he was damn glad he didn’t have eternity staring him down like the vast emptiness of the star field in front of him.

 

 _Time._  

 

Such a strange thing.  It slowed down and sped up, all at once it seemed sometimes, in battle or times of stress, and he had the passing notion that time was controlled by his heart before dismissing it as complete folly. Time was an illusion in that regard.  Relativity and all, just like traveling at FTL. Time inside the ship was slow compared to time outside it. 70 years in the galaxy was 7 seconds in the ship. What was fast for him was slow for another; it just depended on perspective.

 

For instance, he remembered time being normal when the new XO of the Normandy had been introduced to the crew, but he’d have wagered his next year’s salary Jenkins’ would say it slowed down due to adrenaline at meeting one of his heroes.  He remembered his heart fluttering a bit and time slipping away unnoticed when the XO made his rounds and talked with him, continuing that tradition when he became CO. He remembered how he had consciously tried to slow both his heart and time when he asked if Shepard wanted to go with him to the orchard.  And how the days spent there flew by faster than he wanted it to.

 

Except when they kissed.

 

Time had slowed down to a perfect, crystalline moment then, seconds dripping by with the rain outside the barn, stolen moments shivering on their joined lips in their own little world.  His heart had thudded almost painfully in his chest, counting down the minutes left of shore leave, the rest of the mission flashing by in a breathless blur.

 

He remembered the SR-1 attack and how it took forever to kit up and run to crew deck and Shepard.  The agonizing last view he had of his commander fighting the fire in the wiring before the escape pod doors rushed closed and he’d been catapulted into space entirely too quickly for his brain to register.  Time had raced by, chasing his heart into his throat as they heard John’s last gasps for breath, heart not slowing again into seconds and beats crawling by until they were picked up and transported to Arcturus for debriefing.  

 

_Time._

 

Time had stood still and his heart had stopped when he saw Shepard again on Horizon, back from the dead.  He didn’t look a day older than he did the day he died, though he had acquired some worrisome scars. The fragile glass shattered around him when they hugged after all that time, time ramping up beyond what he could keep pace with and heart pounding against his armor.  

 

The frenetic whirl of hours, days, weeks had escaped him while he was stuck on the Citadel afterwards, reading dossiers and going to retrieve their subjects for his biotics team, always a step behind Shepard, fast but not fast enough, heart stuttering if he concentrated on it.  And then the sharp pain when it almost stopped completely, time scraping by, heartless and cruel with its claws deep in his flesh, carving out every nerve-wracking second as he, Anderson, and Hackett listened to the live transmission of the Omega 4 relay mission Shepard had gone on. Sweet relief had washed over him, his heart daring to beat strong and sure again, steadfast as time and tide when Joker confirmed Shepard was alive and the SR-2 was limping home.  

 

_Time._

 

It was always a question he’d had in the back of his head that wormed its way to the front after that.  _‘Is there enough time?’_  He wasn’t so certain of the answer.  It seemed the older he got, the less he had and the faster it passed.  War had made him older, and wiser as recompense, he hoped, beyond his years.  He had felt cheated the first time around with John, their time cut short in a cruel span of a few minutes, their future years together leaking out with the oxygen from Shepard’s hardsuit, burning up as he fell through atmo over Alchera.  But now they had a second chance and he didn’t intend on wasting a moment of it if he could.

 

Parliament and the Council claimed there had been time enough while they incarcerated Shepard, as much for his protection as for a political grandstand show.  And it had been easy to pretend to believe it, too. Life continued on, ever forward into the future, ebbing and flowing with the minutes into hours, hours into days, gathering intel and as much preparation as he could sneak by, until the fabric of time was yanked out from under them in Vancouver and the Reapers advanced the clock to the 11th hour.  

 

His heart flickered at the destruction of his home city, hoping against hope that fate had spared Shepard once more and they’d see each other again, and skipping when they did on the retrofitted Normandy.  He had yearned to pull the commander aside, take a few stolen moments to just  _talk_ , but time was against them, racing along with them against the Reapers to get to the Mars archive before it was too late.  The elevators, those inescapable oh-so-slow elevators, forced them to breathe and pause, regroup and reacquaint themselves, recenter for the coming war, and he was unashamedly glad that they did.  He had the feeling there would be fewer opportunities to take a moment and slow down, whether it was to reflect, take a break, or do a small sanity check before throwing themselves back into the slipstream.  

 

_Time._

 

There hadn’t been enough.  There never was enough. Everything had been cut short, the time being counted out by his helmet crashing on the shuttle in a harsh staccato at the hands of the mech, and his heart unable to slow down to match it until it all suddenly _stopped_ and his vision went white with a buzzing in his ears, Shepard’s frantic cry of _“KAIDAN!”_ floating through the haze.  He remembered his last thought being if this had been what Shepard saw, what Shepard felt, in his final moments and then the blessed _nothing_ as it all went dark and his internal clock broke.

 

And then it had come back in a soothing metronome, heartbeats counting out the moments he thought he’d never get again.  Soft breathing off to the side had matched his own and drifted through the darkness, soothing him. A small glance through heavy eyes proved it to be Shepard, sleeping for once, leaned on the side of Kaidan’s hospital bed, the darkness of the few hours of the night cycle on the Presidium throwing the faintly glowing scars of his face in sharp relief.  He wanted to reach out and touch him, verify that this was real and John was actually _there_ , but the pain meds he was on wouldn’t allow him to move; his hand was too heavy.  Time slowed down, cocooning them in their own little world once more until morning came too quickly and John had slipped away.  

 

The frustrating days ticked slowly by as the doctors ran their batteries of tests, heartbeat increasing whenever Shepard dropped in for a visit and speeding along the time they had much too quickly for his liking until John had to leave again, too soon, much too soon.  

 

He had a strange sense of himself moving quickly through the Citadel when he was called to escort the Council and everyone else seemed to be underwater.  An even more curious effect was how slow time felt, but had the annoying habit of skipping forward in increments. The elevator. The pursuants on top of the elevator.  Firing his pistol at them. Covering the Councilors as they ran to the shuttle pad. Then a blink and he stared at the shuttle on fire, turning slow as molasses in winter to face their hunters. Everything stopped when he saw Shepard.  

 

Time jumped forward again and stretched on forever as he focused on Udina, squeezing the trigger.  A heart did indeed stop with time as his bullet drilled home. The heart just wasn’t his.

 

_Time._

 

It undulated and rippled, tossing him to and fro before casting him adrift, one crazy battle after another ever since he had rejoined the Normandy with barely a single moment to catch his breath.  When Hackett ordered them to the Citadel for mandatory shore leave, time did what it did best. They'd barely been able to catch their breath, pretend at a semblance of normality, before they'd been up and running again, chasing Shepard's imposter through the citadel.  

 

Time had ground to a heavy crawl when Shepard picked him to infiltrate the casino.  Kaidan’s heart had beat thick and slow as he followed John around, weaving through the throngs of oblivious and drunk patrons while silently admiring the lithe form of the commander in his dinner jacket.  It flattered Shepard the way his dress blues did, clean lines and sharp angles, but it was different all the same. He’d never seen John dressed up in any kind of formalwear other than what the Alliance had provided, and he refused to allow his mind to skip ahead to other possible instances he might see it again.  Kaidan distracted himself from possible promises the future might hold by chatting up guards and causing general distractions while Shepard worked on blocking the cameras, until one of the guards had gotten a little too curious. He could feel John’s heart pounding, too, when Shepard had pulled him close, hand cupping the back of his neck, slender fingers caressing the exposed skin above his stiff collar and running through his hair on his nape as he kissed Kaidan deeply next to the wall circuit they were trying to hack in order to throw off the guard.  Just like in the barn and Shepard’s cabin before the attack. He froze a moment as time spun itself around them, slowing their surroundings to background haze and honing in on just the two of them in their own perfect crystalline moment.

 

It was then he had decided to take a chance on those potential future promises and sent Shepard an email asking him to dinner, heart in his throat and each individual aching moment scraping by until he clicked ‘send’.  The response back had been almost immediate.

 

_Time._

 

He scarcely dared to hope they would be able to claim any for themselves, carve out some time for just the two of them.  The stars glittered in the darkness beyond the plexi, frozen and fixed points of light. He hadn’t been lying to Shepard, either, when he said they shouldn’t let time pass them by after they came back from Mahavid.  All those people...10 years of their memories and their lives gone. How strange a thing time was. He glanced once more out the window before looking at his omni-tool and made his way up to the cabin. Surely John would still be up, burning the midnight oil at his private terminal, and Kaidan would have to point out how late it was and gently push him towards the bed.  

 

The door whispered shut behind him, blue glow from the aquarium mingling with the orange glow from the holo-clock on the nightstand.  The terminal was dark, however, as John sat on the couch, chin touching his chest and datapad listlessly held in his hand. He chuckled to himself and cupped John’s cheek, softly kissing him awake.

 

“Hey Commander Sleepy-head...come to bed.  It’s time.”

 

“...’m _not_ sleeping, I was just resting my eyes,” Shepard mumbled, pulling Kaidan on top of him and laying back on the couch seat.

 

“That so,” he teased, wrapping his arms around the commander’s neck.

 

“Mmhm. Tha’s so… hmm...”  The commander’s voice trailed off in a sleepy hum as he shifted underneath Kaidan.

 

“Uh-huh.  I’m pulling rank.  Hit the rack, soldier, and I better see you out in 10 seconds.”

 

John sighed deeply, tightening his arms around Kaidan and settling back into the couch, asleep again.  He didn’t sleep enough. There were never enough hours in the day for him to be able to do so; they were always being pulled to yet another mission after barely managing to scrape out of the last, time nipping at their heels as they bolted to keep ahead of the Reapers.  But they could afford a few moments of peace on the couch, Kaidan decided as he nestled in the commander’s arms, pressing a gentle kiss on John’s forehead.

 

There was enough time for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
